Games Beaten 2017

[fastbilly1]

1. Day of the Tentacle Remastered - PC
2. Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide - PC
3. Final Fantasy VII - PSX
4. Zelda Breath of the Wild - Switch

Since I am terrible at keeping this updated
5. Warframe - PC
I logged well over 100 hours into this over the last six months. As a free to play game, there is fathoms of depth here. Thats free like beer, its not ad supported or wallgardened, you get the full game for free. The catch is with a free account you only get enough of the ingame real money (platinum) for another frame (character) and a handful of weapon slots, or three frames and very few weapons. Since there are 30ish frames and a couple hundred weapons, you end up wanting to pay for the game to get more slots. You can also spend money on player made cosmetic items or just straight up buy weapons/frames though that gets expensive quick.

But everything in the base game world is possible to obtain in game. Want that fancy gun that looks like a AVP smartgun that the heavy gunner enemy carries in the first world, kill enough of them and the blueprint for it will drop. You will get some blueprints through out the story line, side quests, or the random encounter enemy that will show up. You may also get a part for a "prime" version of a weapon or character through an event. Randomly prime characters and prime weapons will be vaulted (like Disney) and the value of their parts on the second hand market skyrockets. Case in point I got a blue print for a Nova Prime Chassis on my first night playing. If I wasnt foolish and built it, it currently sells for 500 platinum - roughly $25 USD. Every day you have a chance for free crafting materials, xp/resource boosters, or a discount for platinum on the real money store. I got one of the 75% off discounts and made one purchase of platinum about 50 hours in. I am still using that same platinum pool. So yes, it is free to play. Prime versions have better base stats or have slots in the weapons with different configurations for mods. They do not break the game but are better than base versions.

But enough about how the economy works. The game is best described as Space Ninjas the Third Person Shooter. Your character moves very quickly and has the ability to jump, double jump, wall jump, wall run, glide, and "bullet" jump (a primed jump with alot of distance and can be chained into the others). The maps can be sprawling or claustrophobic. The world map is our solar system with some liberties and each planet has a dozen or more locations. Each location is a specific mission type and will be made out of a set of modules for that planet. Think of it this way, each planet has 1000 modules, each mission type will use 500 of those modules, each location may use 300. It leads to maps feeling samey, but there are enough different ways the RNG uses the maps for them to be different. They do kinda address this in the story with how the races built up their ships and bases.

But what about this game is so enthralling? Well it is a 4 player murder up with enough variance in the maps between planets and between mission types that every match is interesting. Your missions vary from the basic "exterminate" or "assassinate" to far more complicated "sabotage" which will involve getting into a location, solving a puzzle then getting the hell out of the map changes. My group enjoys exterminate since it allows everyone to try out new things, and Ack is part of it... So when you build a new gun and want to test it, or a new frame and want to see what its powers are like we run a quick exterminate. There are a couple types I do not like for example Excavation has you hold a point while grabbing batteries off of fallen enemies to power a drill. It takes forever and if the map is big the enemies get lost in the middle. But the Digital Extremes is forever tweaking the game so a fix for that will come out soon enough.

There is also a character for everyone. Like to play Defense? Lets get you frost early, so you can put up bubbles of ice that deflect bullets and slow enemies that get close to them. Prefer to be a real ninja, attacking from the shadows against giant enemy crabs? Lets get you Ash where you can disappear and then sneak attack everything. Or do you just want to tank? Start with Excalibur, we will get you Rhino, then eventually Atlas. Or are you more of a support player, well Nova can be built to speed up or slow down enemies in a stupidly large area while damaging them. Or Ember can release a world of fire around her for a large area that on even some mission maps will one shot the base mobs (I may have cheesed the final mission with my over powered Ember).

I went into it soso on third person shooters, and have enjoyed the game thoroughly. There are some stupid choices that havent been fixed yet, but since I started playing they have added three new characters and several dozen weapons. There is always something going on in game. It also helps that Goons are big into it (the founders of the Goon clan were some of the first users) and whenever I am online I can always get a full party. Even though I beat the storyline, my user account is only level 10 out of 23. So I still have lots to do in game.

[Sarge]

I'm done with Breath of the Wild. I'll try to update a bit later with a review. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed my 70+ hours with the game.

[Sarge]

January:

1) The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (PC) (8.5) (1/1) (~5.5 hours)
2) ActRaiser (SNES) (8.0) (1/2) (~4 hours)
3) Bonk's Revenge (GB) (6.0) (1/3) (~1 hour)
4) Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break (GB) (6.5) (1/3) (~1 hour)
5) Blackwell Legacy (PC) (7.0) (1/5) (2.6 hours)
6) Blackwell Unbound (PC) (7.5) (1/7) (2.2 hours)
7) Blackwell Convergence (PC) (8.0) (1/7) (2.4 hours)
8) Blackwell Deception (PC) (8.0) (1/8) (4.7 hours)
9) Blackwell Epiphany (PC) (9.0) (1/9) (6.5 hours)
10) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4) (8.0) (1/22) (~55 hours)
11) Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (360) (8.0) (1/28) (~.5 hours)
12) Deep Duck Trouble Starring Donald Duck (SMS) (6.5) (1/31) (~1 hour)

February:

13) Quackshot Starring Donald Duck (GEN) (7.5) (2/7) (~2 hours)
14) Fire Emblem Heroes (Android) (8.0) (2/9) (~10 hours)
15) Super C (NES) (9.5) (2/20) (~0.5 hours)
16) Contra (NES) (10.0) (2/20) (~0.5 hours)
17) Mickey's Dangerous Chase (GB) (6.5) (2/24) (~1 hour)
18) My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (3DS) (8.5) (2/25) (~19 hours)
19) Mega Man 2 (NES) (10.0) (2/28) (~0.8 hours)

March:
20) Final Fantasy XV (PS4) (8.0) (3/2) (~33 hours)
21) Blaster Master Zero (NS) (9.0) (3/10) (~6.5 hours)
22) Espgaluda II Black Label (360) (8.0?) (3/17) (0.5 hours)
23) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (NS) (9.5) (3/28) (~70+ hours)

So, everyone and their uncle has been playing Breath of the Wild here, including yours truly. Note a dearth of posts from yours truly in the evening? Yeah, now you know why.

This marks the shift of the series to a more open-world design. Now, it may very well be "open-world", but it doesn't quite fall into the same pitfalls as your usual Ubisoft title. It doesn't end up being one of those "checklist games", and its opacity and respect for the player go a long way towards actually giving a feeling of adventure, of truly discovering something new.

The one thing that you don't necessarily realize to start is just how massive the world is. The game doesn't let you see everything to start, instead giving you a sort of introductory area to get used to various systems in the game, combat, and how shrines work. You'll snag your main abilities there, which consist of Magnesis (move metal objects), Stasis (freeze time on an object), Bombs (of both square and round type), and Cryonis (ice pillars in water). These powers will all be combined in the shrines in interesting ways.

Once you've finished up that initial area, you get a sailcloth, and then you start to get an inkling on how massive the world is. You can run around for a long, long time, and consistently uncover something to do, whether it's snagging resources, uncovering Koroks, finding shrines, or beating down enemies and taking their treasure.

Some have effectively said this game is the anti-Skyward Sword. I'm inclined to agree. Instead of a heavy emphasis on dungeons and dungeon-like experiences, the game leaves the world wide open, like a massive, actually interesting version of the overworld of, say, Ocarina of Time, with secrets packed everywhere and impressive vistas even if you're not finding stuff.

That's not to say there aren't dungeons. Oh, no. There are tons of them, in the form of shrines. I think it's common knowledge now that there are 120 of them. That's a lot, even if they are mini-dungeons. Really, I was never wanting for dungeoning. The reward for completing these shrines is a Spirit Orb, which can be redeemed for stamina or life upgrades. (And yes, stamina is back, which I'll touch on later.) You also find various treasure chests with lots of weapons and such.

So, weapons. Everyone knows about the weapon breakage. It's pretty ridiculous. I don't mind the fact that weapons break, but seriously, guys. To compensate, the game hands out weapons like candy. You'll never be wanting for weapons once you really get rolling. It's tough early on, with very limited inventory space, but once you talk to the Korok Hestu and give him the Korok seeds you find, you can expand your inventory space significantly. It's not enough to diminish the experience, but it is a black mark on the game.

The "main" dungeons occur inside the Divine Beasts, and these areas are... a'ight? They've got some neat mechanics, where you can manipulate various parts of the beast itself to change the area and solve puzzles, but these areas are woefully short. Sure, they're not the point, but as a player that has always thrived on long-form dungeons, this certainly feels like a step back. Hopefully the next game will expand on this a bit.

There are lots of little sidequests as well. Usually these have monetary rewards, and money is very important in this game, due to how much it costs to buy equipment and whatnot. There are also "shrine quests", which present a puzzle to find a shrine that won't actually register with your Sheikah Slate's sensor.

I also forgot to mention that the game really thrives on sight lines and scaling high points for observation. You have a scope, and you can spy out and mark interesting features in the landscape, including shrines that you can see from your position. It makes finding them much, much easier. You'll be doing this a fair amount, given that the game doesn't actually mark much at all on your map, only revealing the local topography when successfully scaling one of the "Ubisoft" towers in a region.

Combat is solid, and most assuredly classic Zelda. There are a few small differences, though. Firstly, since you have access to more weapons, you can wield more than a sword, so you've got large swords, spears, clubs, boomerangs, and so forth. You can also perform a parry attack with your shield that is awesome, and a last second dodge will slow time for a flurry attack on an enemy. Time also slows when you target with a bow in mid-air.

Other combat strategies involve using the environment to your advantage. Rolling boulders down on enemies, throwing your bombs at them, blowing up explosive barrels, sneaking up for a powerful Sneakstrike, there are lots of options for combat. Well, early on, anyway. As enemies get tougher, some of the more organic means of killing enemies become less effective.

There is surprisingly little story in the game unless you poke around the map for your missing memories. These are worth tracking down, though; without it, there's not much meat on the bone. The ending is quite the disappointment, with the game providing closure, but not nearly enough. You're not going to confuse it with Final Fantasy VI any time soon. But hey, it's the journey, right?

Graphically, the game looks very good. It's stylized enough that the technical deficiencies are mostly not noticed compared to PS4 games, although they certainly rear their head from time to time. Draw distances can be pretty bad, with lots of pop-in for smaller objects and enemies. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but it's also something that can be hopefully improved in a sequel once it's coded specifically for Switch. Sound design is solid, but music is pretty sparse. What's there is used well, and some of the classic Zelda riffs are used in just the right spot, especially during the end run and ending. I might have gotten a little emotional. Nostalgia is one heck of a drug.

I'm sure there's a ton I've forgotten to mention, but this is easily the best game I've played this year, although the impressive Blaster Master Zero is up there. There are some niggling flaws, though, with the weapon breakage rate, the lack of long-form dungeons, the inability to warp your horse around (this was a terrible idea, frankly), and a stamina meter that needs to be a bit longer by default. These are things that can be fixed in the next installment, and we Zelda fans are going to have to be happy with this entry, what with all the overwhelming praise. It's certainly deserved, but improvements can be made. But none of the flaws are even close to diminishing what is a fantastic experience. Play it, in whatever form you can. It takes a lot of open-world ideas from other games, nixes others, and puts a Nintendo spin on the whole thing to create a truly unique experience.

P.S. The stage has been set for folks to rag on this newest Zelda. I figure it's gonna be cool to hate on pretty soon now!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin ... 1f712913c4

Some of these criticisms are fair, but a game is going to get like this once you've uncovered most of its secrets anyway.

P.P.S. I figure I'm not done with the game yet. Only 80 shrines done, so there's a lot still to do. No way am I doing the 900 Koroks, though... and I don't think that was ever the intention, given the way the balancing is done for the inventory expansions. They're overloaded to make sure there's always something interesting to do in the landscapes.

[Exhuminator]

Everyone knows about the weapon breakage. It's pretty ridiculous.

When I played BotW at your house, I think it was then that we had the conversation about this aspect. So to let everyone else know what I thought; I think it'd be better if weapons simply dulled over time, rather than break. So that diminishes the attack power of the weapon, but doesn't actually break it. Which still encourages the player to trade up weapons for sharper edges, but doesn't leave the player so irritated with actual weapons breaking. With this aspect, the player could find various types of sharpening stones, and it could be another gameplay aspect (like cooking and crafting is) to sharpen the blades (lasting for various durations of time based on stone used). I just think this angle would have accomplished the same goal the designers were going for, without irritating the player so much.

although the impressive Blaster Master Zero is up there

He's right folks, Blaster Master Zero is fantastic. I'm playing through it right now on my 3DS and having a helluva good time.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Everyone knows about the weapon breakage. It's pretty ridiculous.

When I played BotW at your house, I think it was then that we had the conversation about this aspect. So to let everyone else know what I thought; I think it'd be better if weapons simply dulled over time, rather than break. So that diminishes the attack power of the weapon, but doesn't actually break it. Which still encourages the player to trade up weapons for sharper edges, but doesn't leave the player so irritated with actual weapons breaking. With this aspect, the player could find various types of sharpening stones, and it could be another gameplay aspect (like cooking and crafting is) to sharpen the blades (lasting for various durations of time based on stone used). I just think this angle would have accomplished the same goal the designers were going for, without irritating the player so much.

FYI...Demon's Souls employs this approach. IMO, however, weapons in that game do not dull or break quickly enough. (I agree that they break too quickly in BOTW, and I think a happy medium lies somewhere between the two games' approaches to the mechanic.)

[Sarge]

At a minimum, it would allow for finding a new awesome weapon to actually be something worthwhile. By the end you're swimming in good ones... and they're mostly unnecessary in the end battles if you've obtained the Master Sword.

[Exhuminator]

FYI...Demon's Souls employs this approach.

Interesting, didn't know that. Great minds think alike.

[isiolia]

FYI...Demon's Souls employs this approach. IMO, however, weapons in that game do not dull or break quickly enough. (I agree that they break too quickly in BOTW, and I think a happy medium lies somewhere between the two games' approaches to the mechanic.)

I think the Souls games in general do some different things with it. Normal use usually doesn't make it anything to worry about - remember to repair stuff from time to time, or in DS2/3, durability resets when you rest anyway so it's only an issue if stuff breaks.

However, at least prior to weapon arts in 3, special moves ate into durability. Or you'd occasionally have acid environments or attacks that'd degrade gear. A couple of the DS2 DLC bosses, offhand, had accelerated wear that necessitated repair powder or alternate weapons.

What Exhuminator is talking about sounds more like what King's Field IV did - weapons degraded down to 50% of their original damage, making swapping to new ones appealing, but fixing the old worked too. Or you could be like me, not realize that's how it works, and derp through the game doing half damage.

Still, I agree, I'd have rather seen a system that let me stick with weapon types I liked more readily.

[MrPopo]

Now, it may very well be "open-world", but it doesn't quite fall into the same pitfalls as your usual Ubisoft title. It doesn't end up being one of those "checklist games", and its opacity and respect for the player go a long way towards actually giving a feeling of adventure, of truly discovering something new.

Right before reading your review I watched the Zero Punctuation review of the latest Tom Clancy game whose name I've already forgotten, and you could have stolen this paragraph from that review (at least the parts about describing Ubisoft games).

[Sarge]

Great minds think alike, I guess? Although I've certainly read combinations of those thoughts in other reviews, so it could be subconscious.